


Carpe Noctem: Seize The Night

by FullmetalDetective (MusicianInTraining)



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Blood, Bloodlust, Explicit Gore, Gen, Gore, Major Character Injury, Vampire AU, after Brotherhood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 02:15:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29959455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MusicianInTraining/pseuds/FullmetalDetective
Summary: A dark predator has ravaged Central, slaying everything within its night-shadowed clutches, leaving no trace other than an invisible bloodtrail. The Elric brothers inadvertently became deeply involved in the serial murder, much to their great misfortune...
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	1. Prologue: Murder Begins

**Author's Note:**

> all things Fullmetal Alchemist (c) Hiromu Arakawa

**Carpe Noctem...Seize the Night**

**> Prologue: Murder Begins<**

_The Demon of the Night shall stalk its prey,_

_The unknown victim unforeseen his fate_

_For the Killer of the Light is famished to-night,_

_A hunger that will take much to sate._

_No one is safe, even when the moon is high_

_No one is safe when the Monster is nigh._

>...`c.n.`...<

And the monster was very much nigh this fateful night. The clouds severely dampened the moon’s glow, leaving all wanderers upon Central’s streets dependent upon the dim streetlamps and their own poor human eyes. Demons and phantoms alike depend on such shadowing by which to do their own bidding, their soulless beings becoming increasingly attracted to the innocence walking the boulevard. One certain beast looked up at the sound of a clock tower tolling, its crimson eyes sparkling in the crystalline blackout.

The Witching hour was upon them all.

With a throat famished raw with bloodlust, the beast swept deeper into the town’s shadows, lurking, searching for a favorable bite, for a tender piece of flesh to dig into. His vision became set upon a victim at last; a young woman, walking alone, carrying nothing upon her person but a small shoulder bag. Virtually unarmed and unknowing of any sort of potential danger lurking nearby; just as the vampire liked them.

The attack was immediate; her screams of fear and agony were not even given a split second’s chance to be heard as he flung her into a darkened alleyway, cupping his steely-gripped hand upon her shaking lips, his dirty fingernails digging into the soft skin on her face. He took some time to ravish in her frightened appearance, his hungry eyes trailing down her body, his forked, rough tongue caressing her neck, flicking over it again and again, as if the thin skin barely cloaking her rich veins and arteries was a delectable delicacy to behold. His prey flinched as she felt herself being dragged further down into the alley, into the darkness, caught within the very grasp of Hell itself. But there was nothing left to do; the killer was much too strong for her to resist any further. Her tearful eyes widened even further, however, as she stared at two elongated fangs that emerged from the creature’s mouth; they then rolled to the back of her head as he bit down into her jugular. His chapped lips moved around the puncture wounds, gluttonously sucking up all of the blood from within her petite body.

Not a single drop of the beautiful liquid was spilt, not an ounce of the life-giving substance gone to waste.

The girl soon became limp and cold in the predator’s grasp, and she lay, mouth-agape, like a dead-eyed ragdoll, staring up into the heaven-less sky. The vampire smirked as he watched a dark bruise slowly begin to form around the fatal bite marks upon her neck, from which no blood was seeping out, for there was no blood left in the girl’s body any longer. The demonic creature to care to swipe his tongue over said wound, however, in order to allow his saliva to seep into his victim’s skin and close up the marks, shielding any identity of what caused this death to the unknown outside world. After throwing his blood-dried feast for the night roughly down upon the cold, unforgiving concrete, the vampire looked up into the emerging crescent moon, basking in its feeble glow for a moment before sprinting into the night, leaving the dead, forgotten body behind for Central Command to waltz upon come the dawn of the next day…

_No one is safe when the Monster is nigh._

>…`c.n.`…<


	2. Chapter One: Bloodless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all things Fullmetal Alchemist (c) Hiromu Arakawa

**Carpe Noctem...Seize the Night**

**> Chapter One: Bloodless<**

_"Cold and spineless, have you no soul?_

_Wicked minded, out of control and guided_

_By their hunger; they will find new ways to betray us…”_

-“Innocence” by Disturbed

>...`c.n.`...<

_Dear Al,_

_I've recently returned to Central from my journeys out West and was wondering if you would like to meet up sometime in the near future to pool in all that we've learned and to catch up. After all, it's been too long, hasn't it?_

_Do take extra care when you travel, though; my return to Central was greeted with sorrow. There have been a long series of recent, heartless murders occurring in the last month or so; Mustang is literally being buried with numerous case files and investigations concerning said murders. It warms my heart to see him squirm so much! But seriously, it's been bad. There is close to no evidence at every scene of each murder, leaving tracking the fiend to be an especially tiresome task. I've been helping as much as I can around Central command, and though I am not able to do much due to the fact that I no longer serve the government, General Mustang says that he appreciates every bit I do._

_He may be a bastard, but I suppose I owe him a favor or two._

_We could use help from you, Jerso and Zampano, too, if you guys have the time to do so. It would help immensely to have another alchemist and two chimeras to add to our team, after all, seeing as I'm just about as useless as Mustang on a rainy day nowadays....ugh. I can't believe I've just sunk so low as to compare myself to General Bastard!! I need to see you again, Al; maybe you can talk some sense into me. Let me know if you can come to Central. I figure that I will be here quite a while longer due to this big murder case I stupidly got involved in._

_Missing you a ton, brother,_

_Ed._

Edward brushed his bangs out of his eyes as he set the pen down, re-reading the concise letter to his brother one last time before reaching to grab an envelope from the right-hand corner of General Mustang's desk. He really was missing Al a lot, more than he thought he would. After all they had been through together; it was just abnormal to be apart for such an extended period of time. Ed was okay while he was traveling and keeping busy with researching and what-not, but now while he was in Central working on this brutal case, he found himself missing his little brother's cheerful demeanor more and more every day.

"...I believe that desk belongs to _me_ , Elric."

Ed looked up from his letter and grinned evilly as Brigadier General Mustang entered the large room, Lieutenant General Hawkeye following close behind him, her amber eyes shining with slight amusement at the sight of the young man grinning at them from behind the immense piece of furniture. He did not budge as the General approached, however, and instead kicked his boots up and rested them upon the desk lazily, bringing his arms around to the back of his head.

"Hate to break it to you, General, but I've temporarily commandeered it...or maybe _not_ so temporarily. I kind of like the view from here," he said matter-of-factly, spinning the chair around so that he could see clearly through the giant bay windows behind the desk. Mustang crossed his arms in annoyance.

"I don't suppose you've finished all of the paperwork I assigned to you before I left for lunch, have you?"

Ed rolled his eyes and jabbed a finger towards the large pile of neatly stacked and sorted file folders at the far left-hand corner of the desk.

"Unlike you, General, I am quick and complete with my file work."

"See to it that you continue to do so and you can keep the desk," Mustang said, the giddy relief that he didn't have to do paperwork that afternoon after all obvious. He grabbed the pile and sat down on the couch with the files, flipping through them nonchalantly.

"They are in chronological order, correct?"

"Yes, the most recent of the murders on top," Ed said as he turned back to face the duo.

"Detective Grahnger said that there wasn't any sign of foul-play or anything at last night's crime scene. Not even a single drop of blood, and yet the victim was found without a single ounce of it in her body."

"Her? So they've identified the victim?" Ed inquired. Riza nodded:

"Melanie Drews. She was only nineteen years old."

Edward's eyes became downcast with sadness; she was so _young_ , only a year older than himself, and yet her life was so swiftly swept away from her, like a rug from beneath her unassuming feet.

"And there's no pattern within the victims list whatsoever. Even the ages are randomly picked. _Damn_ ," Mustang cursed, running a stressed-out palm through his jet-black hair. "And nothing of any use upon the corpse except for a fingerprint-less bruise on the neck, right?"

"Right," Riza said grimly. "We still have nothing to go by."

"How do we know that these murders were cause by a human?" Edward said, throwing out something to consider. "After all, if there are no fingerprints or footprints or anything human-like to trace back to at any of the crime scenes, then--"

"But that still doesn't explain how there's none of the victim's blood on the ground," Mustang interrupted impatiently.

"That's true; an animal would not have made such a clean job of killing," Riza pointed out, sitting on the sofa across from Mustang. Ed slumped down onto the desk, frustration at their unfruitfulness beginning to slowly simmer within him. He followed the file in Mustang’s hands as he tossed it back onto the desk, watching as the papers all plopped down in unison, their soft _slap_ echoing in the intense thickness of the room’s atmosphere. It’s never a good day at Central Command whenever lives are taken, especially when the military’s detectives and officers have not one single lead as to whom the killer may be. It makes the government look bad, which makes the top officers—Brigadier General Mustang, for instance—sour-face and grumpy. Ed tapped his fingers once more upon the large desk, then stood from Mustang’s chair at last, walking to the front of the desk, to stand in front of the General and his Lieutenant.

“…Take me to that crime scene.”

>...`c.n.`...<

“Detective!”

Detective Grahnger looked up from the trashcan he was dusting for evidence, his spectacles slipping down his nose at the action.

“Lieutenant, General…” he looked questionably at Edward, who responded by extending a hand out to the officer.

“Edward Elric, former state alchemist.”

“Ah! An alchemist!” the detective exclaimed excitedly. “Perhaps you can help me with my newest hypothesis, then, even if you no longer practice the science. Come over here, lad, if you will…”

Ed looked back and raised an eyebrow at the General, who shrugged.

“Detective Grahnger has always been eccentric. Get used to it.”

“Gotcha,” the blonde replied, quickly following the lean, mustached officer to the scene of the crime. At the sight of the CRIME SCENE tape and the chalked-in outline of where the dead body laid upon the concrete, Ed gulped, an eerie feeling creeping up from within, making his blood run cold. He imagined the young girl’s crumpled, bloodless body lying in place of the outline, her eyes cold and glossed-over in death.

“According to the autopsy report, as I’m sure the General has informed you of, the victim was found without a single drop of blood left in her body, just like the other victims before her. The coroner deduced that to be the case due to her heart’s cease of function pre-mortem, for if her heart had continued to pump blood before she was completely drained there would’ve been clear residue within the aorta and the chambers. However, such was not the case, as you obviously know…”

He stooped down and grabbed a packet of papers out of his tan messenger bag, his gloved hands flipping momentarily through the testing reports before he continued:

“The coroner this time through did a swab of the bruise on the neck in addition to the fingerprint dusting, something not previously done on the other victim. He sent in the swab after the fingerprint dusting came back negative, as you know by the police report, doubtless. Now, unfortunately I just received word about two hours ago from the lab, and they’ve reported that the DNA testing failed, for the sample we sent in was apparently either impartial or non-human.”

“Non-human?” Ed interrupted, looking back at Mustang and Hawkeye, who quickly approached the pair at the sound of such news. Grahnger’s nonchalant response was a simple shrug:

“It’s like I said, it could’ve just been too impartial of a sample to be tested. Saliva, though not nearly as solid an example of evidence as fingerprints, is much like that same type of evidence in the sense that it is necessary for one to acquire a complete sample in order to be properly tested. If there is not enough DNA, or not enough of a whole image of a fingerprint, the evidence is inconclusive. Same goes with saliva; without enough to make a solid DNA hypothesis, the evidentiary usefulness of the sample becomes completely invalid, and we can no longer use it to prove our case, or to find our killer. Unfortunately.” 

“So, wait,” Ed spoke up, his head still spinning with all of the legal terms the detective quickly threw out at him. “You mean to say that there was _saliva_ found on the girl’s body?”

The detective nodded firmly: “yes, upon her neck.”

“Then, does that mean she was—“Hawkeye began to inquire, but was interrupted by Grahnger.

“There were no signs of sexual assault and no evidence of penetration; therefore we can deduce that the victim was not raped before she was killed. We’ve yet to find a sensible motive for the saliva upon her neck.”

Sexual assault. Penetration. Saliva. _Goddamn_ , Edward thought, shaking his horror-struck head, attempting to get the innocent girl’s agonized face out of his head without success. _What kind of messed-up world do we live in…?_ Mustang also shook his head in disgust, refusing to meet any of his co-worker’s eyes as he stared fervently upon the chalked-up ground, seeing the blood-drained body itself rather than its ghostly silhouette.

“Come here, if you will, please, Edward,” Grahnger summoned the ex-alchemist, who obeyed dutifully, peering into the shadowy corner of the alley in which the detective crouched. Ed lowered himself next to the officer, following his gaze into the brick orfices on the side of the building.

“Do you see what I see?” the detective whispered, pointed a gloved finger into a small hole in the wall. Ed squinted, attempting to see beyond a puny hole; his eyes widened as he caught sight of a damp, bluish glow in the brick, a lingering piece of light twinkling eerily.

“…do you have an extra pair of gloves I could use?”

“Yes, of course,” Grahnger replied, getting up from his spot next to Ed to fetch his extra pair out of his bag. Mustang approached the boy, curiously wondering over what he was looking for.

“General, look at this,” Ed said, gesturing towards the flicker. Mustang narrowed his eyes as Ed continued: “Do you think it could be the remnants of a transmutation?”

“Could be…” Mustang looked at Ed. “Are you saying you suspect a deranged alchemist could be the cause of this?”

Ed shrugged: “Your guess is as good as mine.”

Grahnger returned quickly with the gloves, watching carefully as Ed slipped them on then prodded around the light-giving hole in the brick wall.

“Couldn’t you just transmute the hole bigger or something instead of doing that?” the impatient detective asked. Ed huffed, turning towards Mustang.

“I can’t, but you can.”

“Right,” Mustang said. Then, with a loud clap of his hands, the Flame Alchemist slapped his hands onto the brick, causing the hole to efficiently expand the wall’s hollow orfices. The General smirked with great pride at his work:

“And to think I didn’t even get the chance to thank the Homunculus that caused me to attain this awesome power!”

Lieutenant Hawkeye rolled her eyes:

“Cool it with the cockiness, sir; we’re investigating a murder here.”

Mustang cleared his throat: “Right…”

“Nothing,” Edward declared sullenly. “Nothing but this.”

Grahnger looked curiously upon the large black crystal the young man pulled out of the transmuted hole. After quickly examining it himself, Ed handed it over to the detective, who took the stone out of the dark recesses of the alley and into the sunlight in order to get a better look at it. It was a translucent black in color and was filled with a dark gray liquid, one resembling liquidated onyx.

“Perhaps they can acquire fingerprints off of this in the lab,” the spectacled officer muttered, then turned and beamed at Ed. “Brilliant, Mr. Elric. You’ve been a tremendous help, you truly have.”

He then turned towards Mustang:

“I will call you as soon as I receive the lab reports from this and send in any new autopsy reports I receive. In the meantime, do keep me informed with any news regarding anything about the case, of course.”

“Will do,” the Brigadier General said, firmly shaking the detective’s hand before following Hawkeye and Edward back to the car.

>…`c.n.`…<

The food in HQ’s mess hall was not exactly gourmet, but it definitely served to satisfy Ed’s hunger pangs he felt after five hours of work. Even though he was no longer technically part of the military, Mustang and his subordinates have given him plenty of work regardless. He worked as hard and long as any of the other office workers, and most of it was on that blasted murder case. It seems that the only job equally as difficult as figuring out who did the murder in the first place was keeping the rest of the residents of Central calm and quiet about it. No more chaos was needed in HQ.

Ed looked up as a huge shadow loomed over him and his tray of food:

“…Hey, Major Armstrong.”

“Edward Elric! How are you today?” the large, heavily muscled Major inquired as he plopped into a chair across from the ex-alchemist. Ed swallowed his mouthful of mashed potatoes before answering:

“I’ve been better. And I know you have, too.”

“Ah, well, yes. I supposed that is true, what with this horrible murder case going on right now…”

Ed (along with everyone else at HQ) knew for a fact that the poor murdered girl was hitting the soft-hearted Major quite a bit. Especially since the victim was around the same age as his youngest sister, Catherine.

“…I just got back from the coroner’s office, actually. I was not there long, mind you, but I did meet with the one who performed the autopsy.”

“And?” Ed pushed the Major to continue. Armstrong sighed:

“He said there were signs of extreme hypertension throughout several of the main arteries, which could be a sign that her blood was forced out by some sort of great suctioning force.”

“Suctioning force?” Ed frowned. “Not sure I like the sound of that.”

“Most agreed,” the Major concurred. “She was so brutally attacked; the bruising on her neck, which went away rather quickly after she had died according to the coroner, was horribly dark. He showed me some hideous pictures of it; it was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Such brutality, on such an innocent young girl,” Armstrong sniffed, tears welling up in his sympathetic eyes. Ed sighed; _a suctioning force and bruising on the neck…it seems like that would be the most reasonable place on her body for the blood to have been drained, but then how was she left with no cuts or incisions of any sort…?_

“Would you by any chance be willing to go back to the coroner’s office tomorrow? I’d like to see the body but I don’t have a ride.”

Armstrong shuddered at the thought of witnessing that again, and then spoke:

“I believe the Brigadier General mentioned something about visiting there tomorrow; you could probably carpool with him.”

Ed huffed at the thought of being stuck with General Bastard for another whole day of crime scene investigating but nonetheless nodded. After all, until he hears back from Alphonse, his time is best spent assisting with this case and helping around Central Command as much as he can, especially if the murderer behind all of this is in fact an alchemist.

>…`c.n.`…<

Edward’s small room on the upper level of his motel overlooked Central’s main street, it’s vast, stone paving stretching far into the abyss of the city in the night. Not many a star twinkled that night, which did well to suit the young ex-alchemist’s mood. After all, why should the stars twinkle so lively when someone’s innocent life’s flame just recently went out?

After a virtually sleepless night, he met with Mustang and Hawkeye at eight-forty-five sharp to drive over to the coroner’s office. When Edward approached the General and his main subordinate, Mustang opened his mouth as if to tell the boy something, but changed his mind and closed it, gesturing for him to get in the car, handing him a packet of papers Ed immediately recognized as the autopsy and police reports Detective Grahnger had given them just the other day.

“What exactly made you want to go to the coroner’s with us, Edward?” Lieutenant Hawkeye inquired as she started the car.

“I feel like I’ll be able to make a better-educated guess on the cause of death if I see the aftermath,” he explained, resting his chin upon his palm as he stared thoughtfully out the window. Mustang huffed:

“You better not freak out at the sight of the corpse…”

Ed glowered at the General.

“I have a stronger stomach than that, you know; I’m not just a kid anymore, Mustang!”

“Yeah, sure,” Mustang waved him off, not wanting to hear the ex-alchemist’s ranting.

The coroner’s office, which supposedly opened at nine o’clock sharp every normal weekday, was still locked up when the trio arrived on location at nine-thirteen. Mustang looked upon the closed sign, muttering something inaudible about damned unpunctuality. Hawkeye and Ed looked at each other and shrugged as they made themselves as comfortable as possible upon the stone benches in front of the looming white building, Hawkeye taking the autopsy papers from Edward in order to look through them herself before the meeting. As he idly looked about the hedges and the small shrubbery around the perimeter of the office looked decently tended-to, Ed couldn’t help wondering sadistically if the landscapers purposely allowed the flowers to die as a symbol of what lies inside the establishment.

“Sorry for the tardiness, all of you,” came an annoyed voice from behind the small group. Dr. Knox approached quickly, bearing keys to the office and his black leather doctor’s bag. “Dr. Chast got caught up with something at Central Medical and sent me to meet with you this morning last-minute, the damned bastard.”

“Weren’t you the one who did the most recent victim’s autopsy, though?” Mustang inquired, his confused expression turning to one of surprise as Dr. Knox, the newly re-appointed head director to Central’s coroner’s office, shook his head firmly.

“That was one of Chast’s students who cut up Drews. Did a really clean job of it, too, I’d say, he’s a better pathologist than Chast himself.

Mustang face palmed; it was such a _comfort_ to him that the city’s law enforcement officers allowed an autopsy on a victim of first-degree murder to be performed by a pathology student rather than by an expert in the area. Dr. Knox ignored the distasteful gesture:

“Well, hurry up and come in already!”

_Good morning to you, too, Dr.!_ Ed thought amusedly. _He sure hasn’t changed much since Al and I last saw him._

“Oh, by the way, good to see you, Edward,” the doctor said over his shoulder. “You’re looking well.”

“Thanks, you too, doctor,” Ed replied, observing the windowed hallways they were walking down with slight trepidation. There were numerous other doors with small windows right next to them, and upon peeking, Ed could see that a couple of rooms bore a body on their silver examination tables, the object of investigation covered only by a thin white sheet.

“And how is Alphonse doing? I’m surprised to see he’s not with you, actually.”

“He’s doing great, last I heard from him,” Ed said, looking away from the eerie scene. “Which was about a month ago, if I’m remembering correctly. He’s researching alchemy abroad right now.”

“Well, that’s good to hear,” he muttered, finally stopping and unlocking a door to one of the numerous examination rooms. “Here we are, and here are a few masks if the formaldehyde gets to you.”

After grabbing a pair of latex gloves and putting on his lab coat, Knox swiftly lifted the thin white sheet up and off of the body of Melanie Drews. Ed gulped at the sight; her skin was nearly translucent, easily revealing what remained of her deoxygenated veins and arteries running up her arms and legs. The bruise on her neck, just as Detective Grahnger had stated yesterday, did clear up decently, but its remains were obvious, the distinct purplish mark upon her paper-thin skin showing up like a fly in a glass of milk. Upon looking within her hazel eyes, Ed’s heart dropped into the dark abyss of his stomach as he recognized her frozen expression of deathly fear.

“’Melanie Drews, female, age 19, was found at six-fifty-eight am on the morning of blah blah blahh,’” Dr. Knox read off of the clipboard hanging from the examination table. “…ok, here we go. ‘Most probable cause of death: exsanguination by means of intentional manslaughter—‘geez, _that’s_ vague—‘engendered by a single laceration of the jugular vein. Though no cuts or punctures were found upon the victim’s neck, there is internal evidence suggesting that was the precise spot of incision, including but not limited to the punctures found upon the _Pterygoid plexus_. Various other spots of bruising and mild scraping across the limbs suggest the usage of brute force upon the victim pre-mortem…’”

Dr. Knox looked up from the report to frown upon the dissected victim. Mustang also approached the body:

“Punctures in the what?”

“ _Pterygoid plexus_ , the scientific name of the largest jugular vein, the most probable vein for a killer to stab in order to efficiently drain a person’s blood.”

“Ok, well, I suppose there’s one half of the proof,” Mustang reasoned concernedly. “But then where are the punctures on the neck?”

“Good question,” Knox muttered bemusedly. “The murderer must’ve closed the wounds somehow…but how he did is a complete loss to me.”

The pathologist turned to Edward, motioning for him to take a look for himself. Ed obeyed, peering over the deceased girl’s neck. Sure enough, just as the men had stated, the neck was clear of any sort of lacerations, other than the single thin cut the medical student had made in order to perform the autopsy, of course.

“Is there any way you can think of that the puncture wound could be closed up via alchemy?” Knox inquired of the ex-alchemist. Ed frowned, thinking back to how he had used alchemy to close his fatal wounds in the fallen mine on Briggs. He remembered how the cuts had looked after doing so, relatively rough and not at all completely gone like upon this victim’s neck. _But at the same time_ , he remembered, _my alchemy wasn’t at one hundred-percent because I was hurt so badly_. With that last thought, he looked up at the doctor:

“I’m sure it’s possible, depending of course upon just how skilled the alchemist is.”

“Right,” Knox said, nodding once as he continued to skim through the report. He walked past Mustang and Ed and pointed his pen at a small bruise on Melanie Drews’ waist:

“So it can be said that she was grabbed off of the sidewalk by the midsection and forcefully dragged into the alleyway, where she tried to scream but was muffled roughly,” he deduced, lifting his makeshift cursor to point out a dark spot just below the poor girl’s bottom lip. “Once dragged into the alley she was quickly drained of all her blood by means of a couple of puncture wounds to the jugular, wounds that were, theoretically speaking, of course, closed efficiently by means of a transmutation. After that the killer fled the scene, leaving the corpse behind in the alley where she was found the next morning.”

“That sounds about right,” Edward remarked as Mustang took the pencil from Knox to jot down these additions to the police report.

“Right,” Knox continued. “We sent in a swab of the bruise on her neck, did those lab results get back to you?”

“Yes, but unfortunately Detective Grahnger said that the sample was too impartial to be properly tested and that we couldn’t use it at evidence,” Mustang informed the coroner. Dr. Knox frowned at this unfortunate news as the Lieutenant General asked:

“I don’t know if this is possible, but is there any way to have the victim’s wrists and waist dusted for fingerprinting or anything like that?”

“Not at this point in the investigation, unfortunately; if the saliva sample was inconclusive then any fingerprint dusting would be darn near pointless…”

The four of them looked back at the body, all pondering over what their next move should be.

>…`c.n.`…<

It was nearly three in the morning, and Ed was still staring at the updated police report strewn upon his unused bed. He stared at the names until they began to float off of the page, spinning around in his mind. There were no connections to be made with any of the six victims, just that they were all found in alleyways or behind dumpsters in dark, remote corners of the city’s limits and they were all obviously killed by the same person in the same manner. They weren’t related in any ways; they weren’t all girls or all in a certain age range or anything of the sort. Just completely randomized killing.

Ed sighed: _we’re getting absolutely nowhere with this case, and people are going to keep dying until we catch this sicko. Someone could be out there right now, about to be unknowingly attacked…_

At this thought, the ex-alchemist lifted his head to look out the window into the dark early morning. A thin sliver of a moon could barely be seen behind some thin gray clouds, and Ed could see shadows rippling across the streets, lightly illuminated by the lamps trailing the streets. Without a second thought Ed found himself exiting the room and swiftly running down the stairs and out of the motel’s front doors into the ominous city streets.

_The hell am I doing out here??_ he thought to himself as his golden eyes scoured the streets for anything suspicious-looking. Blowing his bangs out of his face, he turned around to scan the opposite side of the street. Still nothing that he could see was going on down there. A brisk autumn night breeze whipped against his cheeks as he walked down the sidewalk on high-alert, stupidly realizing only until he was about four-hundred meters away from his motel that he was unarmed, making him completely vulnerable for an attack by an armed serial killer. He knew he should go back, but he couldn’t bring himself to turn around, for what if someone was being attacked right down the road from where he was standing?

He trudged onward until the clock tower ahead of him told him he’d been stalking his non-existent perpetrator for nearly half an hour. It was then that he stopped walking, sighing as he tilted his head back into the coal-black sky, the sliver-moon reflected into his irises. He hesitated only once more before finally turning and heading back, for to the right of where he stood he could’ve sworn he saw a shadowy figure move with its cloaking abyss, watching him, waiting for its opportune moment...

But instead Ed ended up shaking his head, frustratingly muttering to himself about seeing damned things that weren’t there.

_They will find new ways to betray us…_

>…`c.n.`…<


End file.
